An innovative approach towards 3D-printed scaffolds for the next generation of tissue-engineered vascular grafts

Abstract

Due to the limitation of vascular autografts, there is a growing demand to develop synthetic vascular grafts. A variety of methods and polymers are available for fabrication of vascular grafts. Three dimensional (3D) printing is a rapid method with several advantages such as cost effectiveness, reproducibility, high accuracy, and capability of creating custom based geometry. Polylactic acid (PLA) is a common, biodegradable, and FDA approved polyester for generation of vascular scaffolds. In this study, vascular scaffolds have been fabricated from PLA using a fused deposition modeling (FDM) printer. To overcome the low resolution of FDM for printing small pore sizes, the flow rate of polymer was manipulated. The results indicate that reducing the flow rate of polymer leads to increase of porosity and pore size. The surface morphology of printed scaffolds represents uniform structure of struts. The degradation and viability results demonstrate that PLA is a biocompatible and appropriate polymer to provide mechanical support by gradual degradation. Overall, this study introduces a new and simple approach to print vascular scaffolds with tunable porosity and pore size using FDM and a solid CAD model. Due to the numerous advantages of this technique, these types of scaffolds can successfully be used as the next generation of tissue-engineered vascular grafts.